Team of Rivals

On Saturday, after nearly a month of sporadic reading, I finished Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a group biography about Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates.

Goodwin does an excellent job of weaving together the lives of her subjects. I also found her narrative style engaging and it was easy to follow the parallel timelines of the main "characters".

Of the four men, Chase was shown in the most negative light. He shined brightly in the beginning, but lost wattage as events unfolded. Eventually, the power games he played while Secretary of the Treasury (e.g. submitting resignation letters on multiple occasions) and his relentless quest for the presidency in 1864 would overshadow his good qualities. Perhaps, the only other man portrayed more negatively was General George McClellan, who led the Army of the Potomac early in the war and ran against Lincoln in 1864 as the Democratic nominee.

Bates and Seward received more even depictions. Goodwin made sure to balance their moments of weakness with their moments of greatness. By the end of the book, both came out favorably.

Obviously, Goodwin was most sympathetic to Lincoln. Considering the complete title of her book is Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, that didn't come as a surprise.

The book painted Lincoln as a man of immense patience and magnanimity, a man of great humor and an endless supply of anecdotes, a man who was slow to decide, but steadfast in his decisions and a man who had a remarkable sense of timing in matters where public sentiment was most critical. One wonders if he was truly this way, or if he only appears this way due to some historical "airbrushing".

With today's cynical attitude towards everything (especially heroes), it seem extremely easy to dismiss Goodwin's characterizations of Lincoln as exaggerations and to believe Lincoln was somehow less than she depicts him to be, but wouldn't it be nice if that cynicism was unfounded for a change and Lincoln turned out to be "all that" and maybe more?

It would be wonderful if somebody we esteemed as patient, magnanimous and wise were truly so. It would also be heartening if the people we seem to look up to (like actors, athletes and models) and the people we're expected to look up to (like historical figures and current world and religious leaders) were what they claimed or what they seemed. In other words, it would be nice if our heroes were real.

Okay, well, that was a bit of a birdwalk. Anyway, finishing this book puts my year-to-date total of completed reads at 33, five books shy of my book-a-week pace. The next four books are stacked and ready to go. They're also significantly shorter, so there's still hope I'll catch up.